Moods. dysregulation, like pleasantly drowning in quick sand, the sensation leaches into you, like that slow pin prick into a vein. You feel that warmth, blanketing like mugginess on a hot day, steaming and settling onto your skin, the poison, velvety caressing into your veins, drawing you down. Each breathe is a sinking , languid melt you don’t want to fight off, it’s easy to slide into that comfort of turning off the pain, the triggers, the hurt, the chaos. Each breath deeper into the warm mud, closing in, safe, terrifyingly safe. Depression is a womb, it comforts and envelopes, seals you off into a space where you’re suspended in hurt and sorrow, all you know, timeless, un-seeing. There is no up or down, around, sights, smells, all you feel is hurt, bone deep hurt, everywhere, out your eyes, in your skin. You’re meant to fight this, don’t sink into the warm cocoon of the sand, don’t slide into the mucus of the womb, because once in, you’re trapped, coming out is a labyrinth of emotions, and days of recovery.

But how to elude the crumbs of safety, come in and we will make you safe, warm, turn off that outside world, to hell with working through all the pain, let it welcome you, let’s revel in it, become it, and lose oneself in it.

I know I don’t want this but I am just too tired to fight all the triggers, they’re all around and I am tired. Each one seems bigger than the next though infinitesimally smaller, crashing in never ending waves and I’m drowning, can I not just drown? I am tired of swimming, I am tired, and I am tired of people and their pokes and prods, tired of smiling, tired of trying to be me, the smiling me.

So easy to let go, so much easier to find that hole and crawl in, womb, wave, sand, take me to nothingness. Instead, put the training on, the hard hat and back to fighting, fighting all the demons that come within it, inviting me down down down to their opulent palace of oblivion and panacea of anaesthesia.

I will win the fight, again, as always. In the meanwhile, let’s face the pain. Pray its sticks and stones and not knives and bloods.

Ive been alone, purely alone without the noise of life for a couple of days now. Not to say I haven’t interacted or been with people, that triggers and pokes are not still happening, they do, but being so isolated from the crush of life, makes me able to feel each sense perceptibly. This would normally be a 5 alarm fire to run straight into the clutches of hell, feeling every speck of sand stuck to my damned soul in that pesky way sand never seems to every want to come off.

It’s been enlightening running through the emotions. I just posted a blog about my happiness and I am happy but as we with BPD know that doesn’t mean emotions are still. There is still the need to use my DBT training to manage the rises and falls and interpret what is real and not. For example, someone that I had been waiting to hear from just told me they couldn’t do something. A very normal, run of the mill, they’re busy right now. To your average joe that should be just fine. To BPD mind its the ultimate in rejection, or it seemed so for me, crushingly so, complete with anxiety, incredulousness, sorrow and then every scenario I could conjure from what was wrong with me, I wasn’t loved to what i would do to make that person feel bad, absolute blacks and whites from one spectrum to the other till I could wrestle it into a manageable plane and believe you me, that took at least an hour. Substantial distraction, poring over the emotion and rationalizing each piece to myself, removing vengeful thoughts, walking around, OCD typing. It’s the shits, imagine doing this all day everyday. This is life with BPD.

Once upon a time, I didn’t recognize it, so whichever emotion hit first and hit hard took control and it was a gong show. One after the other, as like waves, they keep coming in sets. And this is when mania would set in, it’s a drug, that once it sets in feeds on each trigger, making you higher and higher. Mania doesn’t mean happy highs, you can also be manic dark, which I think is worse. Much better to be on a careening high of false adrenaline and fun, than rolling down a bank of darkness picking up every maligned patch of disease along the way.

The ability to have some semblance of control, even with the struggle I still need to manage it, is amazing. I still make mistakes, many mistakes, I still cry like my world is shattering, I still want to die, but I have cognizance. There is a part of me that has learned the habit of feeling what can be right and wrong in myself, and when an emotion, anguish or yearning is me or me in BPD mind. It’s far from perfect but I do encourage anyone that struggles, if they have the resource offered for free through the mental health community or pay for a private course, to take dialectical behavioural therapy. It is not the same thing as CBT, as CBT alumnus like to think. DBT was specifically comprised for people suffering from BPD and each module nails down challenges specific to us, it goes beyond being cognitive.

My hard part is still emotion regulation, still makes me feel like I have my legs kicked out from under me and the wind knocked from me each time. Somehow, you still have to pick yourself up after being gut punched and regulate the emotion. It’s much easier to lie on the ground letting the pain wash over you and wish it would all end. Or just let the mind take over and the devil and angel settle on your shoulder, deciding how to settle your emotional score. Letting your emotional move be determined by strangers, which it pretty much is if you don’t take control, can be an easy way out, just wait to see the end of movie, which may end up with you dead, incarcerated, doing something you really regret (putting this mildly) or just let yourself become a waste of space. Most times, it ends badly… but at that point you really don’t give a damn. I’m getting better, I do tend to lie there ruminating and invariably make the wrong decision before the right one which leaves a gnawing pit of guilt in my stomach.

I may speak from experience as I am feeling this way right now. I knew the right choices but I couldn’t fight the voices, insecurity, guilt to get to the right choice first. I got there but screwed up along the way and watching the litter behind me is sickening. I know, I need to pat myself on the back because i can SEE the litter, I CAN talk about it, I CAN see it, but it doesn’t mean I want to know it 😦 So many positives but still the negatives. I did come right, found the correct voice but listened to the wrong ones first because they were easier. What I’m trying to say, it’s not easy and there is so much guilt and repercussion along the way, but I am still doing good, better than I ever have, and that I can look back and write this is major kudos.

No more 5-Alarm for right now, just some guilt. Onwards, may bite me in the ass later but I did OK.

Happy. So happy tears are spilling down my cheeks as I write these 5 little letters. I am HAPPY (what?). Happy and so scared of when happy goes away. Be in the moment, I keep reeling that line back in to the present, mindful to stay in the emotion of how I am here and now, don’t let the spool get stuck in the rock depths. Marinate in this moment, moments, and commit them to memory for when the darkness returns, make this the light, remember the light.

My hands tremble and water still drains from my eyes, times like these are so fleeting, I can’t believe I am sitting in reality. I haven’t felt this breathe move through my chest, living, life. Outside the window, is beauty, appreciation, perfection, adjectives I see but never understand as applying to me.

I want to wade into the ocean and contribute my salty tears to the conflux of the ocean, wash myself into this peacefulness and join energies with the salve of the water, ensuring when I return, I live in her depths.

For 3 days I have woken up without death sitting on my chest, the breeze coming through the windows washing smiles across my face, the gentle warmth of contentment curling up beside me. It doesn’t matter that it’s just me, i dance around the kitchen in disorganized abandon, laugh at my ridiculousness, talk out loud to the oceans and stars, and close my eyes to nothing but peace, gone are the death threats, plans of pain and the zero sum game. Nights are my friend again, morning my haven.

Unrealistic, of course, crests and troughs is how life works and the rise and fall of the waves outside remind me that I need to grasp every millisecond of this happiness while it’s in my palms. I needed to wipe this home from my mind the last 3 years to move forward, to heal, get well, find help and focus on just living. Living, that’s what I have done, I have lived. Lived to return to life, even for a brief moment in time, because this is life, I forgot, I made her go away, but here she is, in all her glory, smiling down at my sorrowful joy.

The emotions are thunderous, jungle drums beating a crescendo rising from within of warmth, heat, with a hint of fear. Is it fair to be afraid, mirages come and go, don’t get too attached because reality is stronger than fiction. I want to reach a hand out and touch the bubble and see if the walls wobble and pass.

For now, hands off, it will wobble but that can wait. Right now, I need to have my moment in the sun, to bask, glory and absorb every minute of these wonderful wonderful feelings that have been gone and dormant for far too long. Standing in the sun. I’m going to stand in the sun, tears flowing, happiness cascading down, singing my joy to the world and dancing in circles.

Vida.

*SG, we’re standing in the sun. Wherever, you are are, I’m standing here for both of us*

It’s been 3 nights of unsettled sleep. I take Trazadone at night to help me sleep, which means that unsettled sleep and nightmares means that there is enough percolating to over ride the medication. Welcome to the Rocky Horror House of my mind.

Getting to bed has been a uncomfortable affair of bed gymnastics from one side to another, from front to back, there never seems to be a place of rest. Once asleep the dreams start, which too is an anomaly, I don’t dream, and when I do dream it’s a slap in the face that I have unresolved issues. My early warning system so to speak.

The disquiet is hard to pinpoint but this morning’s remembrance gave me a foothold. My dreams have centered around someone I care about being taken, bound, restrained and pained and the crux of saving them lies with me figuring the answers to hidden messages. Such clarity in the dreams of the captors, sweat beading on their brow, the smell of fear, the tension, and the urgency for me to see, see what I can’t see in the puzzle to save them.

It doesn’t take a PhD to figure out I’m scared of hurting someone I love if I can’t sort the puzzle in my mind. That this screams poor inter-personal relationship girl plagued by guilt at her inability to not hurt people. In 3 nights I haven’t saved anyone as yet. Luckily my dreams/mares have excluded me from having to watch their grizzly end. Of course, it hasn’t been nice enough to PG-13 my emotions in the dreams.

So with heavy heart I sit here before getting ready to work, tired and frustrated. It’s not a bad day and I don’t feel bad, it’s frustrating not sleeping and knowing full well why you can’t sleep but unable to solve it. So, here’s to a great day. I have a therapy appointment on Thursday so I’ll get head shrinked and zapped back into shape and maybe only kill off one more person tonight (in my dream).